Sunday, November 1, 2009

It’s a well-known fact that I don’t like Lil Wayne. Personally, I think all Lil Wayne does is put words together, instead of actually rapping about something. He gives occasional entertaining moments, but I always thought he was more known for being hyped up by his own flood of mediocre Internet material. Apparently I’m the exception, because aside from some hipster circles who value “real hip hop” (the stuff no one buys outside said hipster circles), everyone loves Lil Wayne. So when it was announced Wayne was coming out with a new mixtape, “the streets” (the Internet, college campuses & urban-pop radio dj’s) were in frenzy. So how is the mixtape you ask? There are two things that can’t be taken away from Wayne; dude knows how to make a punch line and he is naturally infectious. The mixtape is what any other generic mixtape is, a bunch of assorted freestyles and scrapped songs lumped together with a few drops to make some cohesion. Through the tape, Wayne raps over everything from Mario’s “Break-Up”, to Jay-Z’s “Run This Town” to Black Eyed Peas’ “I Gotta Feeling”. His flow is amorphous and seems to adapt to all of the different beats, while still rambling his seemingly bottomless supply of one-liners. My personal favorite is “Leave a p***y microsoft like Windows Vista”. I have to admit he really is the biggest name of the genre for a valid reason. I guess the flaws of the tape are when he lets his weed carriers aka Young Money try to make their names for themselves. Jae Millz was and still is unnoteworthy, Shannell will probably always be Nicki Minaj’s second banana, Gudda Gudda’s only function (other than being another body cavity to smuggle coke, weed or whatever rappers smuggle these days through an airport) is to fill time for Wayne to catch his breath, while Tyga is still most notable for being the punching bag of the hip hop, before Yung Breg took that from him. The only fault with Wayne’s performance is that he pretty much does the whole kill you and screw your girl free association thing for almost an hour. Fans will love this, but the average listener will get bored, which I was. It made me realize the purpose of seemingly obscure detours of his catalogue, such as “Lollipop” and “Prom Queen”. They were unpredictable, which is what the mixtape lacked, but after all it is only a mixtape. For now, I guess you win Mr. Carter. However when you screw up, next time, I’ll be on your ass like…you and Birdman (pause).